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Philomena’s Observation Book, Sunday part 2

By Madame vonHedwig on Sunday, July 26th, 2009

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“Excuse me,” he said, in a melodic voice that was just adding insult to injury, “I’m terribly sorry to disturb your work, but you are Philly, aren’t you?”

Slowly, I moved a stack of paper onto the vulture-soiled sheets in front of me.  I applied my pencil to the sheet, and wrote, “Icarus got off easy.”

“Oh, I do beg your pardon,” the God continued, “I’ve been talking to my sister just now and forgotten my manners.  I mean to say, do I have the honor of addressing Fraulein von Hedwig?”

I set down my pencil, for the charade was too much to continue.  I adopted my frostiest, most severe, Mother-crushing-some-jumped-up-petty-aristo-who-just-asked-her-if-it-was-true-she-had-once-been-a-circus-performer-voice.  “Yes?”

“I’m sorry to disturb your work, but… no, I already said that, didn’t I?  I’ve been hoping to run into you around school, but you haven’t left your room for days.  I couldn’t visit your room, of course, even though my sister shares it.  ‘Inventio et Decorum’, you know.”

At this point, I’m afraid I was staring blankly at him.  Perhaps it was a trick of the light, the lantern flame disturbed by the flight of a vulture overhead, but I believe his finely chiseled cheeks colored at this point.

“The school motto, I mean to say, Discovery And Propriety, or um, Invention and Manners, or um…”

Something in my brain shifted, a tiny thought calved from a glacier of stupidity.

“Your sister?”

“Oh yes,” the God’s confidence returned as he found himself back on solid ground – away from Latin and on to family relations.  “Pelly said you didn’t want to be disturbed, but I just had to meet you.  I threatened her with the most awful brotherly retributions if she didn’t help me.  I have a dreadfully sordid cache of nursery stories saved up for just this sort of emergency.   I’m Nick, you know, Nick Gamble.”

I felt a shock course though me as though I were next to Father’s Ball Lightening Generator.  “Pelly’s brother?  And Pelly told you where to find me?”

“Well, yes, but only after I threatened to tell the entire first form the one about the all-day sucker and Nurse’s hamster.”

I already knew that one.  “So you are Pelly’s brother, who was off skiing with friends when we went to Riga over the holiday,” I said.

“That’s right.”

“Pelly never told me you were a –“  I stopped, gagging a bit on the word “God” that had treacherously leapt to my lips.  I cleared my throat.  “She didn’t tell me you were part of this … club.”  I waved a dismissive hand.

“Part of it?  I founded it!  Best rag we’ve had all year!”

“Rag?”

“What a lark!  It’s the most fun I’ve had since the build-your-own joy buzzer craze.

“That ended rather messily as well,” I reminded him.

“Huh?  Oh, Perkins.  Well, I don’t think he was quite Flier material, really.”  He paused to admire his badge.  “I mean, the rest of us wore parachutes when we went down.”

The vulture took that moment to squawk, reminding us both what Perkins was material for now.

“I saw your first flight, you know.  I was in lecture when you dropped past.  You must have pulled your chute just as you passed us!  I say, you’re cool as an iceberg.  I’ve done the drop twice now, and I felt plenty nervous waiting ‘til the hall to pull the cord!  Couldn’t do it the first time, honest truth!  Pulled it at the Alchemy Lab, I think.  Hard to tell, actually.  It all goes by rather quickly, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does.”  I smiled then.  Oh traitorous lips!  But I couldn’t help it.  He admitted he was nervous.  He’s at leas two years senior than me in school, looks like a Greek God, and he named a club after me!  An action, I reminded myself strictly, of which I disapprove for both my own and my family’s dignity.

“Why did you start a club?” I asked.  “You could have done the drop all you wanted without having a name and a badge.”

He shuffled about a bit, and ruffled his hair.  Against all probability his hair remained exactly as perfectly wavy as before he touched it.  My fingers twitched, I couldn’t help it – I started imagining a experiments to test the wavy perfection faculty of his hair.  In a purely scientific way, of course.

“Just for the fun, you know.  It helps to have a few pals along to buck one up before one jumps off a castle into a ravine.”

I thought of Pelly’s hand wringing, and had to agree.

“And anyway…”  He ruffled his hair again, and looked up at the vulture, perching on the 2-story pneumatic drill press across the hall.  “I thought you deserved to be recognized.  I’ve never known a girl to come up with a brilliant rag before.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry, that didn’t come out well.  None of this has, actually.  I thought – well, I thought you’d be more pleased!”

“Pleased?  Pleased?  To have my failure cheered by two hundred upperclassmen? To have my name bandied about the school?  To have my serious work made frivolous by a herd of unruly thrill seekers?  To have my heart’s desire mocked-”

I stopped.  I had become rather shrill, against all Mother’s deportment lessons.  (“Shrillness is a sign of weakness, dear, it sounds like fear.  It should be your listener, not yourself, experiencing fear…”)  I glanced sidelong at him; he seemed absorbed by the sight of his shoe.

“I believe a group of unruly parachuting thrill seekers is better described as a flock.”

“Quite.”

This story began here and continues with Sunday, part 3.

Tags: Academy, ball lightening, circus, fabricator., fearless, flying, gas, lamp, light, mad scientist prank, parachute, Philomena, steam, steampunk, stories, story, von Hedwig, ya, young adult